BRISSEAU AND LEGEAY IN THE GIRL FROM NOWHERE

Grizzled geezer meets paranormal waif: Brisseau weaves magic with simple means

Jean-Claude Brisseau's small, low-budget film La fille de nulle part brings together paranormal activity and homelessness when Michel, a retired math teacher and writer (played by Brisseau himself) rescues the titular "girl," named Dora (Virginie Legeay) when he finds her beaten up on his own doorstep, takes her in, and ultimately makes her his editorial consultant. This has nothing to do with Louis Delluc's famous 1922 film, The Woman from Nowhere. When the old guy finds his adopted waif can levitate guéridon pedestal tables and do other stuff, he also begins to think she's also the reincarnation of his deceased wife. But that comes later.

Those of us who have seen films by Jean-Claude Brisseau before (I've seen Secret Things and À l'Aventure) know his cinema has been a mélange of beautiful images, eroticism, psychoanalysis, philosophizing, and a Sixties Nouvelle Vague sensibility that's uniquely French. Maybe he's out of date, as I suggested in my review of À l'Aventure, but that's beginning to seem to me more and more a big part of his charm, a charm that seems greater this time because he keeps it simple. The Girl from Nowhere, compared to those other two films, which were longer on the eroticism, with some high-toned orgies thrown in, is more restrained and personal and less ambitious, indeed not at all the kind of film you'd expect from Brisseau. Any older man who is a little lonely can sympathize. Because this is a simple dream for such a man: that he will find someone to spend his last years (or his last moments) with, someone pretty, sprightly, and smart.

There are no erotic fantasies here, or really only a brief one, a seemingly occult scene where two nude women caress each other. Michel and Dora address each other with exquisite courtesy. Michel want only to help Dora. Then after she has been in his apartment -- a big, lived-in place in the middle of Paris that might be any Francophile's fantasy pied-à-terre in the City of Light -- he wants her to stay. It turns out she is an orphan, who lost her parents in a car crash when she was seven and who has no one and has never had lasting personal relationships or a fixed domicile, a "Girl from Nowhere" indeed. But she loves books and is intelligent. Her relationships with men never work. As soon as she falls for them, they kick her out. Thus a period of escape from Michel with a young man on a motorcycle ends with her return.

The rest is spiritualism, visions, and scares, mixed with discussions between Michel and Dora about the subject of his book, which with her help he finishes. This is the project that the work on together after she comes back and wants to live with him, for now, anyway. The book's subject, inspired by Michel's experiences with an insane man who had hallucinations, is the illusions that men create for themselves in order to make life bearable. The book also includes some devastating declarations about the Bible based on new archeological findings. Some of the apparitions that appear to Michel and Dora when they're not working on the book are genuinely scary. Low-keyed though the film is, its tech package is impeccable. The levitation of the table is well done (and it turns out to be a very feisty table). But the best parts are simply the conversations between Michel and Dora.

The most down to earth of these are the ones in which Michel tries to persuade Dora to let him make her the heir to his estate, the spacious and comfy flat and his possessions. Michel has "made solitude his companion" since the death of his wife 29 years ago, and says it took him ten years to deal with the loss and sometimes he thinks he still hasn't. He thanks Dora now for making him happy; he want to complete the gesture. He considers various methods to avoid the inheritance tax -- he has a good friend (Claude Morel) who provides advice -- including marriage or adoption. But Dora rejects all, because she wants to remain free. They seem only to reach to each other, celebrating a temporary connection, but these moments are touching and real. Brisseau's film is a triumph of the magic that cinema can achieve with imagination, heart, and the simplest means.

Screened for this review as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema of the Film Society of Lincoln Center in collaboration with UniFrance, running from Feb. 28-Mar. 10, 2013, Le fille de nulle part, 90 mins., debuted in July 2012 at Locarno, where the Variety reviewer, Boyd von Hoeij, could not see the point of it, or understand why it won the grand prize of the festival. Among the press with whom I saw it a similar view was prevalent. But The Girl from Nowhere is a charming, quirky, well-made little film, touching on important things about life, that only a French filmmaker could have made. At the Feb. 6, 2013 French release, the French critics got it: it has an excellent Allociné press rating of 3.8, (based on 25 reviews) with raves in particularly from some of the more sophisticated publications, such as Cahiers du Cinéma and Les Inrockuptibles.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.